Ugly Tolerance

When I’m asked what I identify myself as, at least ideologically or philosophically, I tend to answer with basically nothing or rather that it doesn’t necessarily matter what I label myself, as it’s more in my actions that you can see what kind of person I am. Of course I have my influences – and I’ve never shied away from admitting to them, but I still go by actions rather than what people say – unless I trust their word after gaining their trust.

This is something I still hold firm to, and it’s not for a contrarian reason – if someone has something interesting to say or valuable to give, you’ll hear them regardless of what they call themselves. Conversely if someone calls themselves a hero but steps on the toes of other people with the utmost glee, it’s clear that the label is a dishonest one – in other words, the medium is always the message.

The medium I tend to display towards the people who know me is of someone of intense efficiency, integrity and respect. I don’t lie to people. If I can’t give people something, I don’t say I can. If I fail to live by what I say, I admit to it and take responsibility. In other words, I own myself and my actions. I don’t lie.

This conversely moves into the realm of tolerance. I don’t tolerate people I don’t like or people who waste my time as if it were a toy that they could freely play with without consequence. I also don’t pretend to tolerate others based on some lofty notion that “tolerance” needs to be practiced with egalitarian fervor and everyone’s opinion matters.

Everyone’s opinion doesn’t matter, and most people’s lives are irrelevant to me. I simply don’t care what others do with their lives – as long as you leave me alone, I leave you alone. That’s the unspoken deal. I don’t lie about what I believe and that’s supported by my actions.

But there is this movement of “tolerance” that exists now, hijacking the very word and fogging up its definitions, claiming that we ought to be tolerant of everyone, especially particularly fringe groups that were not tolerated in the past.

Everyone, except the ones that aren’t to be tolerated. You only need but see how specific races, ideologies and political positions are treated depending on which fantasy football political compass team they land on when throwing the dart at the wall. Remember, the medium is the message – one can preach tolerance while simultaneously clamping down on someone’s neck with a boot and simultaneously yelling “wear a mask or else”. It’s not the word that matters there. Use your eyes.

I digress – this problem is easily solved. Once you swallow the pill reminding you of the inherent meaninglessness of everything in the world and begin to build your life how you would like it because, hint – you are the meaning maker – , you begin to deconstruct the language that’s been hijacked by academics, skeptics and gross subhuman trash and identify that the words no longer have any meaning when yelled out by them – they’re arbitrary sounds yelled out because everyone is conditioned to believe that the word means good. “Tolerance” sounds good because you’re educated to think it does.

But good? For who? For what? The who is important – it’s important because there is only one concrete in existence that it can refer to, and it’s you – or metaphysically, the individual.

All individuals have tolerance of different degrees and based on their values. The core is that we all leave each other alone and co-operate with each other by choice and with benefits to one another. Fun fact but relationships should be win-win.

The problem of “tolerance” is solved right there – once you remove attributes that are not essential to what makes a human a human and get to their essential – their mind ergo their individuality, you just get down to the question of “who do I tolerate, to what extent, and why?”

It’s just for you and only you. It’s a selfish thing. There’s no group consensus required to give you the information you already know, and you don’t need to register your tolerance in order to validate it. Who do you give a shit about around you, who do you not? Once you answer that, you just leave people alone and entangle yourself with ones that matter. It really is that simple on the surface.

But I think that for a lot of people nowadays, the inner ugliness of their false “tolerance” is so deeply rooted into their personalities now that doing anything else but maintaining this preachy woo woo validation identity would be too much for them to handle – because the wretched, ugly evil that they know they have but can’t admit to would just spew out of them violently and destroy them. Their false ego is wrapped around this idea of being a “tolerant person”, but their actions are in direct contradiction to their image – and as all know, reality will always crush contradictions.

It gets to a point where if you lie to yourself that you’re beautiful no matter what, after enough times you really start to believe it – you place your consciousness above reality and delude yourself into thinking that indeed, you are beautiful, tolerant and great, regardless of the vile actions you take and the deep, swirling vortex of ugliness swimming inside you that you feel every day.

You can see this kind of delusion now with the doubling down of lunatics during the pandemic – the incessant screaming that we need more lockdowns, more masks, more jabs, more laws, more fines; all in the name of “fighting the virus” and “protecting the vulnerable” without a hint of attempting to understand that after two years, none of that has worked effectively, the virus has been confirmed endemic for a long time, and the vulnerable are now the ones who have lost their businesses and livelihood. Economically vulnerable and destitute doesn’t count, I guess.

I think part of the screaming is also part of the coping – the coping of someone who preaches but does not practice, and who can’t admit to being so, so catastrophically wrong. The admittance would mentally destroy them, maybe. I think that there’s hope for everyone in some sense, but perhaps that’s the sliver of hope left in me that isn’t completely swallowed yet by the deep cynicism I have for most of humanity.

There’s an ugliness that we all have to face within ourselves at some point. It’s not inherent ugliness or “original sin” – that’s not what I mean. It’s the ugliness behind the lies we sometimes tell ourselves or the delusions we hold onto in order to cope with the fact that maybe we’re just lazy or lying to ourselves.

I think it comes from the fact that we’re educated in a culture which teaches us conflicting ideas – tolerate everyone but just not that guy over there. Trust the science but don’t trust that opposing opinion on the other side because 30 people said so.

When we hold ideas like this, we begin to concoct stupid rationalizations behind the things we think. We preach tolerance while stepping on toes and shut down dissent when it opposes our contradictory idea of tolerance. It creates an ugliness because whatever avoids reality and reason necessarily becomes rotten. You cannot know it’s poison when you reject the tools that show you why it is.

I once had lots of conflicting thoughts and ideas, alongside deeply rattled emotional storms brewing inside me – bullying, growing up without a father figure teaching me how to fight, shitty friends etc, all of that can fuck a mind up.

I faced them and worked it all out over time. The ugliness no longer is there anymore because I took the time to figure out what was going on in my head and where I was not in line with what was real.

I own my shit and don’t filter what I think – and if I do, then I work on unfiltering it and just staying real.

It certainly leads to better thinking, but I also think it is directly in opposition with what most of humanity has been taught these past few decades: to follow consensus, to “live your truth”, to “be tolerant” but not in the sense that is in line with reality.

Going back to the beginning regarding labels – I still don’t think they matter much, but given my deep distrust of most people and general pessimism regarding interacting with people, the closest thing one could call me is a cynic.

Being a cynic might be ugly, but it’s the ugly truth.

I love humanity still, but I just don’t like the humans in it.